EU Bickering Pauses for Nobel

Leaders Tout Past Achievements, but Struggle to Lay Out a Detailed Vision of the Future

ENLARGE

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday at a ceremony in front of some 950 people at Oslo's city hall.
European Pressphoto Agency

By

Gabriele Steinhauser and

Kjetil Malkenes Hovland

Updated Dec. 10, 2012 7:28 p.m. ET

OSLO—The often fractious leaders of Europe took a break from constant questions about how to resolve their debt troubles Monday to celebrate their relative peace.

For a few hours, most of the leaders of a continent once racked by war joined to accept this year's Nobel Peace Prize amid grand ceremony, more than three years into an economic crisis that has plunged much of the continent into recession and stoked tensions among many of Europe's member states.

The head of the Nobel Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland, hailed the European Union for bringing peace after centuries of war as he handed over the diploma and medal at a ceremony before some 950 people at Oslo's city hall.

Invoking the specter of a previous economic crisis—that of the 1930s—that led to protectionism, nationalism and war, he said, "We know from the interwar years that this is what can happen when ordinary people pay the bills for a financial crisis triggered by others. But the solution now as then is not for the countries to act on their own at the expense of others."

Timeline: History of the EU

Herman Van Rompuy, left, José Manuel Barroso, in the middle, and Martin Schulz hold the Nobel Peace Prize after they accepted it on behalf of the EU during a ceremony at City Hall in Oslo on Monday. Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

Accepting the prize, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, which brings together the governments of the 27 member states, recounted hearing stories of war firsthand from his family as a child in Belgium.

"In 1940, my father, then 17, had to dig his own grave. He got away; otherwise, I would not be here today," he said.

In the front two rows of the audience were 20 of the bloc's 27 leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who over the weekend said he intends to resign.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative Party contains deep euro-skeptics, was among those who skipped the event. He instead sent Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who heads the more-euro-friendly Liberal Democrat Party.

Europe's leaders have been seeing a lot of each other as they muddle through the crisis. They are due to return to a summit in Brussels on Thursday for the next installment. But their views on where Europe needs to go remain far apart.

"Today's award gives Europeans a considerable task for the future," said French President François Hollande, who sat next to Ms. Merkel, with whom he has had somewhat chilly relations. "We don't want to be the heads of states and government who have renounced the European project."

Messrs. Van Rompuy and European Commission chief José Manuel Barroso spoke of the EU's past achievements, including reconciling Germany and France after the ravages of two world wars to the rapid integration of former Soviet-bloc states in Eastern Europe.

But Mr. Van Rompuy acknowledged that those memories were fading. "Parents struggling to make ends meet, workers recently laid off, students who fear that, however hard they try, they won't get their first job," he said. "When they think about Europe, peace is not the first thing that comes to mind.

"War has become inconceivable," he added. "Yet inconceivable does not mean impossible."

Some in Norway and farther afield argued that the award shouldn't have been made while Brussels is promoting austerity in some of Europe's most indebted states—especially Greece, Spain and Portugal—in response to the crisis.

An odd coalition of roughly 300 international peace activists and Norwegian political parties set on keeping their country outside the EU protested the award Sunday. "How can you award those who push my country and eventually the rest of the South of Europe back into the Middle Ages?" Dimitris Kodelas, a member of the Greek Parliament for the far-left Syriza party, asked the crowd.

Still, on Monday evening, the mood in the streets was more celebratory. and the crowd, estimated at 2,000, much larger. Messrs. Van Rompuy and Barroso and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, waved from the balcony at the Grand Hotel to revelers below. After a torchlight parade through the streets, some in the crowd could be heard chanting, "EU, EU."

Corrections & Amplifications Martin Schulz is president of the European Parliament. An earlier version of this article misspelled his last name as Shultz.

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